On the uselessness of sophists
Why internet debate-lord content is garbage and actively harmful
There’s apparently a debate raging in “breadtube” circles about the value of online debates, with one side saying it’s mostly mindless entertainment while the other claims it’s actually a critical tool of political education.
I believe both are wrong. Debates, and particularly the kind of debates you see taking place on youtube between nazis, liberals and other ideological cosplay artists of various kinds, are actively harmful. They obscure rather than illuminate, encourage rote learning of talking points instead of understanding, and center cheap superficial spectacle over detailed, empirically informed, nuanced analysis.
And that is inevitable given its particular format. The Ancients were well aware of this. Or at least, some of them like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were. They despised the so-called sophists for turning philosophy, the acquiring of understanding and knowledge, into a cheap spectacle, a rhetorical trick that can be taught to any paying customer (or sub, as we call them today). The aim of the sophist wasn’t to change people’s minds through the faculty of reason and the use of knowledge and wisdom, but rather to make it appear as if they were doing so through the use of theatrics and rhetoric, appealing to people’s emotions and base instinctive urges.
It is not surprising that the people who are deemed to be the most “able” among the contemporary sophists are all upper middle class white dudebros who have mastered the skill of talking very fast while saying absolutely nothing—unless you considering rattling off intros to wiki pages as a substitute for knowledge and understanding.
A recent example: I was watching a clip of two people debating a historical topic which is widely discussed in the secondary literature. Entire articles and books have been written about it, and instead of actually engaging with the topic seriously, one of them literally goes to the wikipedia page for it and starts reading it. The other person has never heard of the topic, so they can do nothing but try to deflect. So this was considered an EPIC WIN AND TAKEDOWN for the wiki reader. Is this serious? Is this how you obtain knowledge? Is this how you effect actual political understanding in people?
No, it’s trash of the lowest kind, and actively harmful. It teaches people that the way you have to engage in politics is by learning superficial factoids about a topic and how best to present them to someone to PWN them, instead of actually understanding what the hell you’re talking about.
And again, this is an inherent limitation of the debate-format. That is why video essays can actually be useful, because, like actual essays/articles, they discuss a particular topic at great length and engage with the relevant available literature on the topic (assuming it’s done well). And guess what? They reach a mass audience as well, and actually promote the attainment of knowledge and understanding through nuanced, critical analysis.
It’s telling by the way that those who are best able to make such video essays are typically terrible at debate-lord content, and vice versa. This is because the two require a different set of skills, one whose purpose is to obscure, the other’s to illuminate.
UPDATE, some additional remarks I made on twitter regarding this post:
I don't get how some of these debatebros don't feel embarrassed when they show their faces while they're spewing such uneducated takes on their large platforms for thousands to see
I feel this analysis is a bit shallow. Sure debates are mostly a rhetorical show, but this is in my opinion downplaying the positive impact some of them may have.
They can be a great way of teaching people how to defend themselves in real life situations from bad faith talking points, and possibly avoid social humiliation, which can be an especially useful skill if you are from a marginalized community.
Rhetorical wins are not empty either. A considerable amount of people on the internet get radicalized by ideological authority figures to whom they cling on to. When said authority figures get verbally outplayed in a humiliating manner during a debate, it can lead their viewers to genuinely feel insecure in their worldviews and possibly consider better ones. This of course, isn't always the case, and I'm not claiming these debates really reach any insanely large audiences either, but decently sized ones.
I also dislike this narrative that debates are only rattling of cheap shallow talking points.
Given that at least one participant in a debate really knows what they are talking about, and it is not just a yelling match, debates also have the capability of disseminating and encouraging more in depth analysis. For example, as someone who got introduced to the left partly through a prominent debatebro (Vaush) I saw that these debates would often lead to discussing studies, political theory, literature, philosophy, etc. which sparked my own interest in sociology and political literature.
This comment is not meant to glorify debates, they are only one form of media among many.
I just feel like this text is brushing them aside as merely "white man yell talking point" when they can be much more than that. And to be totally clear, debates can also be harmful, and no one should ever consider them the be all and end all of political engagement.